Online analytical processing and decision support provides great potential to allow users to access and manipulate enterprise data. Being able to readily access data from a relational, multidimensional, or other type of databases allows users to generate reports and make decisions based on current data.
Unfortunately, to be able to selectively access data from enterprise databases may require uses to have some skill using database query languages, such as structured query language (SQL) or Multi-Dimensional Expressions (MDX) language. Many persons that would like or need to use information stored in the databases may not have the technical expertise to create or modify database queries to retrieve desired data. These users frequently rely on pre-scripted reports that have been prepared by skilled database programmers. The users may run these reports which, in turn, present queries formulated by the programmers and present reports for which the programmers selected the data and the format.
Programming these reports may be challenging even for technically-skilled personnel. In addition, having to create, update, and modify queries in response to user requests may be very time- and labor-intensive. Furthermore, the reports resulting from these queries still may not specifically present the data the user wants it or may not present it in a way that the user desires, but many users will not have the skill to modify the queries to suit their needs.